Trump: The End Game

President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 17, 2017, to board Marine One for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, then to speak at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Commencement Ceremony.

Trump will be forced from the presidency. The only question is by what means, and how much further damage this wounded madman will do along the way.

It is the classic problem with dealing with a Mad King. It needs to be done quickly.

The more cornered Trump feels—the more isolated and beleaguered—the crazier and more paranoid he will get. Nobody can be trusted. They are all out to get him.

The pattern of a new crisis a day will continue.

Trump keeps digging the hole deeper because he can’t stop himself. He is a badly impaired psychopath. Senior Republicans have finally grasped that however much he seemed a useful idiot for their agenda, he is just too crazy and too dangerous.

The moment of truth came when they realized that he was a menace not just to the Republic—they could live with that—but to the Republicans. As Trump might put it, sad. But that’s the Republican army we have.

That said, what happens now?

History is speeding up at a far faster rate than during Watergate. It took more than two years between the June 1972 break-in and Nixon’s ouster in August 1974. In the meantime, the government functioned. Nixon only went nuts—talking to the portraits on the West Wing walls, asking Kissinger to pray with him—in the final days.

By contrast, Trump has never even gotten his government functioning. And it grows more dysfunctional by the day.

Here’s what is likely to unfold, not in months but in weeks: Senior members of the Republican establishment—the national security elite, leading senators and members of the House, business figures—will confer and conclude that Trump has to go, and the sooner the better.

Some lucky soul will be delegated to let Trump know that he needs to resign. If he doesn’t, he will be subjected either to an impeachment proceeding or an impairment proceeding under the 25th Amendment. The rest is detail.

All of the signs are there. Republican leaders have stopped defending Trump, and the White House staff is too demoralized and disorganized even to provide talking points.

This will happen, and it will happen faster than most people thought. Let’s hope Trump doesn’t blow us all up first.